74 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



city, it might be well to store your apples in large crates in cold 

 storage and market them in open packages as the retail trade 

 will take them. 



Let me give you right here an example of marketing apples 

 near Toledo, Ohio, which I consider the finest individual mar- 

 keting that I know of in the country. Mr. Farnsworth has 

 an orchard of about 125 acres, not all apples, but various fruits. 

 He doesn't go to the large cities ; he takes Toledo and Lima as 

 his main outlets. He has the deal worked so fine that he oper- 

 ates almost independently of marketing conditions, and he told 

 me that in 15 years in marketing his apples he thought he 

 had not varied the price of the twenty-pound market basket 

 which he used in marketing. He packs about as fine a grade 

 of fruit as you often see. He puts red netting over them, with 

 his printed slip, "From Toledo and Lima," and that apple is 

 known as well as any brand of canned corn, 01 better ; it is 

 known all over the country. He has selected several grocery 

 stores in various parts of the city and he gives them what they 

 want. He has certain winter varieties and they know what 

 these varieties are. They telephone down that they want so many 

 baskets of this, and so many baskets of that kind. He has his 

 own little cold storage on the farm, and furnishes them fresh 

 every morning or so, and they sell those apples year in' and 

 year out to the retail trade at a dollar a basket. Even with his 

 orchard as large as it is, he can't supply the markets, because 

 he has worked up such a reputation for those apples, and the 

 people know when they get a basket of them every apple will 

 be perfect. A twenty-pound basket of those apples makes a fine 

 Christmas present to a friend, or to have in the home, and you 

 know that you have a basket of fine apples. He says, "I am 

 almost ashamed to take the money when I see what they are 

 selling for outside." He is in a favorite spot, but I just give 

 that as an illustration of what he has done in selling direct to 

 the retailer. I think this is the best example of that kind of 

 ^Marketing in the country. 



In 1913, when scab was prevalent in tlie country, he found 

 in his whole orchard only two apples which had the least scab 

 upon them. He sprays so thoroughly and constantly and has 

 gotten those diseases so well under his control that during one 

 season he found only three scabby apples in his whole orchard. 



